Monthly Archives: May 2017

Topic of the Week: Stress in the Library Workplace

Libraries are generally wonderful places to work – we all like it here!

But you also know that some days are just hard. We are a customer service profession, and that means dealing with all kinds of people every day: patrons, supervisors, colleagues – and it can be stressful.

It is not a surprise to anyone in the library field that we are feeling stressed at work. Any discussions between librarians seem to turn to the issues they are facing and ways they are solving problems, or not solving them. There have been many articles published with vague suggestions for reducing stress, including “take deep breaths” or “smile more often” – not completely helpful advice for many library people attempting to deal with increasing patrons pressures and decreasing funding.

Today we are going to talk about the some of my research work, which identified some of the most common sources of stress. Then we will talk about taking some organized steps to help alleviate or eliminate these stressors.

It is time to get past the idea that workplace stress is an issue affecting library people on just an individual level, and to begin to look at stress as a widespread issue we can address across the profession. Then we can help everyone to be more satisfied at work, and more productive!

Topic of the Week: Copyright

We will start off by looking at the history of copyright, and getting some ideas about how it has developed over time. Ownership is a big deal, and the rights of a creator to the products s/he has developed are important. Copyright helps to protect that absolute right to complete ownership, and also gives the rest of us some opportunities to use the material created.

Copyright is federal law; so unlike most of what we discuss – it has specific meanings, and specific penalties for breaking these laws! (and they can be pretty steep – not jail but a lot of money)

Federal law means it only applies to the US: every country has its own copyright laws and protections for intellectual property

As technology changes, and formats change, violations of copyright and intellectual property become both more difficult to enforce and difficult to regulate

Check out our website for a LOT of information! We have dozens of links to materials we discussed here, information on copyright in libraries, copyright with new technology, and training your patrons in copyright rules.

Topic of the Week:
International Libraries

There are so many libraries all over the place, we want to bring you a few you might not know about yet

We will gush over a couple we have visited; then look at some other interesting libraries. There are thousands of libraries we could be looking at, so we picked some that are interesting right now, though not selected as representatives of their region.

We will revisit this topic again (probably multiple times!); so send us some of your favorites, or you are interested in hearing about in a future episode

Check out our website for all the information on this episode, photos of the libraries, and links to everything!